Israel Accused of Air Strike on Sudan Munitions Factory

Sudan has complained to the UN security council that Israeli planes bombed a munitions plant in Khartoum, an attack that has been widely interpreted as a warning to Iran over its nuclear programme.

Israeli military commentators said that the Yarmouk facility in the Sudanese capital was owned by Iran and had been used to supply weapons to Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip. The “impressive” reach of the secret operation was said to have demonstrated an ability to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities â€” a similar distance from Israel.

As reverberations continued from Tuesday’s 1,000-mile attack, Israel would neither confirm nor deny it was involved. Ehud Barak, the defence minister, said : “There is nothing I can say about this subject.” But one of his most senior officials praised the country’s air force and called Sudan a “terrorist state”.